After Jared Mauch struggled to get good broadband service in rural Michigan from AT&T or Comcast, he reportedly built his own fiber-to-the-home internet service provider, or ISP. Now Mauch is expanding its local services with a $2.6 million government grant, part of state and local tax stimulus funds from the America Rescue Plan, Ars Technica reported Wednesday.
When Ars Technica first wrote about Mauch and his ISP, Washtenaw Fiber Properties LLC, last January, he was providing internet service to 30 homes in Michigan. He reportedly decided to start his own ISP after Comcast asked for $50,000 to extend its cable network to his home.
Mauch would now use the grant money to expand his services to hundreds more homes. It signed a contract in May with local Washtenaw County officials that requires it to service 417 homes, but it’s looking at nearly 600 potential customers, according to Ars Technica. Its ISP would provide speeds of up to 100 Mbps with unlimited data for $55 per month or 1 Gbps with unlimited data for $79 per month.
High-speed fiber networks quickly expanded in the United States thanks in part to pandemic-influenced telecommuting and government subsidies. US programs such as the Rural Digital Opportunity Fund and Broadband Equity have encouraged Internet Service Providers to provide faster access to locations in the US that initially would not have been profitable.
Last November, President Joe Biden signed a $1.2 trillion deal infrastructure bill which has spent $65 billion on broadband access. The new law aims to help shut down Numeric fraction, which refers to the divide between certain regions and demographic groups that are not equipped with modern technology and those that are.
Recent news highlights how communities that lack resources for digital needs are creating their own. Construction, covered by funding from Mauch, will begin on an area that surrounds a lake in Freedom Township in August, Ars Technica reported.
“Generally speaking, it’s a low-income area as well as an area with no service for a very long time other than cellular or wireless,” Mauch told the publication. “The goal is to close the gap on them very quickly.”